Aaron had the brilliant, drunken idea of having me perform surgery on him, right then and there. He showed me a bump on his hip the size of a tangerine, a fatty tissue build-up under the skin, and said, “I want you to cut it out. That would be so cool, to have it cut out by Marv.” Turning to the doctor he asked, “He could do it, right? It’s not that hard.”
Doc thought about it for a second and said, “Yeah, he could probably do it.”
My drunken thought was, “What an opportunity! How many chances will I ever get in my life to perform elective surgery on a willing patient under the supervision of a doctor outside the legal reach of the malpractice laws of the United States?” Aaron lay down on the table and Doc brought over the operating equipment. He drew with his finger across the four-inch round bump on Aaron’s hip. “All you have to do is make an incision across the top. Once you get it open, take the scalpel and just kind of cut the fatty lump away from the under part of the skin. You do that all the way around and then you close it up. I could stitch it up if you’re not comfortable doing that.” Aaron was egging me on to do it, a way to prove to me and the gang that he was so tough that he wouldn’t even feel me slicing him open and cutting out a piece of him, while also challenging the “movie star” to see if I was brave enough to do it. I came to my senses, thank God. I stood down. I surrendered. I was weak and he was strong. He never backed down from being ready to be cut, and of course Doc never said anything that doubted that Aaron could take it. The responsibility to back off was up to me not to do something so drunkenly reckless as amateur tumor surgery. But I have regretted it ever since. It would have been so fucking cool to have done a real fucking surgery!
I knew it was time to leave when I saw Henry going off with Chevy to the bathroom, wearing night vision goggles and carrying a machine gun. I didn’t know what was going on in there, but I knew we should go before we caused some real damage. We all headed out to Major Fun’s Jeep, exchanging hugs and email addresses. There was gunfire in the distance, so the Young Turks decided to escort us back to the airport camp and “then maybe drive out and see what’s going on.” I got the sense they were about to put in a full night’s work. As a farewell gift, Doc handed Henry a huge baggie full of unmarked prescription pills, ostensibly to help him sleep on the plane. “Don’t take more than two at a time. But two of those and a beer and you will sleep the whole trip.” (At the rate of two per plane trip, the baggie contained enough pills for about 150 round trips.) We raced through Baghdad, with Major Fun showing considerable driving skills, and went back to our tent to try to sleep and digest not only the burgers and beer, but these new hard facts of war that I had ingested over the course of one strange evening.
We got up hungover, scarfed up some shitty breakfast food, and made it to the departure area of the airport, where there were at least a thousand soldiers, all waiting. It was a great opportunity to finish my Handshake Tour and hand out the last of the letters from my Malibu mates. I got a feeling what it must be like to run for office, introducing myself to strangers and finding a personal connection with so many individuals, so many faces and so many, many stories. Henry and I strapped into seats made of netting against the wall of another C-130, this one filled with Humvees and soldiers. The pilot performed a stomach-bending, spiraling, tactical takeoff, which strained not only the chains holding the Humvees in place, but the Pop Tarts that were about to pop out of my guts. Up, up, and away, and in an hour and a half it was over. We had left Iraq, left the war zone, and I could feel the passage of time. Like my wedding and the birth of my children, I knew that this trip would divide my life into before, during, and after, and I had crossed over into the forever after.
It was surreal to end up back in the hotel in Kuwait with the butler. Even though we had only been in the war zone a short time, we felt like we had “survived” and treated ourselves like sailors on leave. My brilliant son had booked our trip home through Amsterdam for three days, what he had dubbed “The Hookers and Hash Tour.” It was a smashing success, and of course ended up being all hash and no hookers. The Van Gogh Museum, The Rijksmuseum, Anne Frank’s House, and canals everywhere. We rented bikes, smoked a lot of pot at bars, ate and drank three meals a day of the finest food and spirits, floated in isolation tanks, met beautiful Dutch people, saw the freak show of the Red Light District, and stayed in a beautiful little apartment. It was way too short and way too fun. When I got back to Malibu, I kissed Laure with the best soldier-returning-from-war kiss I could muster and hugged Sophie and Ella for an uncomfortably long time. I went to each school and did an assembly, showing pictures from the trip and my stolen piece of marble, answering questions, telling them how much their letters meant to the troops, and completing this unique mission and honor I had been given, to be the conduit of love and gratitude between the soldiers fighting the fight and the people in whose name they were fighting it.
SUGAR TITS AND ME
Garry Marshall was a show business hero of mine. A brilliant comedy writer who created Happy Days, Mork & Mindy, and other hit TV shows, he then transformed himself into a top film director with Pretty Woman, Flamingo Kid, and A League of Their Own. Garry’s passion was theater, and he owned the beautiful, 130-seat Falcon Theatre in Burbank. So when he said he wanted to produce the West Coast premiere of Barbra’s Wedding, I was beside myself with excitement. He told me how much he loved the play and asked if I would consider being in it. The role of Jerry Schiff was obviously written as my pathetic, self-loathing alter ego, and he thought it would be quite something to see me play it. It was a great part (if I do say so myself) that I had acted out in my head everyday while I was writing it, and I decided to see what it would be like to actually play it. We cast Crystal Bernard as Molly, hired a terrific young director, and had a wonderfully successful run. I loved playing the part; it was emotional and cathartic, and every laugh we got, I got a double dopamine hit—one as actor and one as writer. Getting to perform in a first-class production of my own play in front of Garry’s show business friends, giants of Hollywood, was the cherry on the cake of this adventure I had created for myself out of thin air, with the inadvertent help of Barbra Streisand.
Speaking of Barbra Streisand, Malibu was getting crazier and crazier. It had been discovered, with McMansions popping up all around, and I was getting more and more claustrophobic. Where I used to have electricians and car mechanics as my neighbors, now I had Kid Rock and Cindy Crawford. The fireman across the gully passed away, and his son, who became the realtor-to-therich, turned their humble home into a McMansion monstrosity, with construction going on for years. On the other hand, I was fundraising for the Malibu Foundation, and networking my ass off, especially with wealthy potential donors. The parties we went to were over the top. Christmas parties with acres of real snow (in Malibu!) including sledding hills, piles of caviar, free-flowing booze, and hot chocolate bars. A private concert with the legendary Tom Jones performing in the backyard. An afternoon with an enormous crowd in an authentic Bedouin tent, chanting with some guru introduced by Tony Robbins himself. But the craziest night of all was when we went to television producer Mark Burnett’s house for an intimate dinner, just twelve of us, and who should be sitting across from me but none other than Barbra Streisand herself and her handsome husband James Brolin. And sitting next to them was Donald Trump, who was starring in Mark’s show, The Apprentice. Mr. Trump was thrilled to see me, since we had “starred in Home Alone 2 together,” and spent the evening bragging to me about the ratings for The Apprentice, which was the Number One show on TV, going into minute detail about the different demographics that were watching. He was just another boring actor, needy and egotistical, and having quality time like this with him did nothing to diminish my first impression of him, from back in the day in New York when he was a tabloid playboy, living off his daddy’s money. Who knew he was presidential material?
But the chitchat at the table got bizarrely awkward when Mark focused the conversation on me for a moment, saying he had heard I had written a play, and asking me what it was about. My face burned red with embarrassment. The whole night I had been on edge, not knowing if Barbra and James had ever even heard of Barbra’s Wedding, let alone knew I wrote it, and feeling guilty about the jokes I had written at their expense, especially Mr. Brolin. So I responded by saying the play was “about marriage and how tough it can be.” He pressed for specifics, but I gave him back only generalities. I was looking at all of them to see if they were fucking with me, but they weren’t. It was just regular show business small talk to them and I, like Mr. Trump, was just another actor talking about his play. I changed the subject as soon as I could, but Laure and I were stunned when we got back in the car. What are the chances that I would end up at dinner with Barbra Fucking Streisand and have to explain my play to her directly? And that having dinner with the future president of the United States would be the least interesting part of the evening?
The biggest celebrity in my real life at that time was Mel Gibson. Robyn and Mel were so generous to the Malibu Foundation, giving a one-million-dollar donation that gave the organization long-term stability. Mel and I did another fundraising show together and had a blast onstage making each other laugh. When he produced his first TV comedy series, Complete Savages, he asked me to direct, which gave us a chance to work together. He bought a Gulf Stream G5 jet, and I was touched and amazed that he invited me, out of everyone, to go with him on its maiden flight—flying to Las Vegas for the day to play a round of golf and fly home. It was crazy, just the two of us on that plane, with leather seats and sofas, two stewardesses, and all the food and drink you could consume. Mel felt guilty about buying it, worried that his dad would think it was a ridiculous waste of money, and I somehow found myself advocating that the plane was a good thing to buy. We played a round of golf at the fanciest course I have ever been to, with caddies who rode ahead in golf carts to find the ball you shanked into the woods or rough (which came in handy because we were both terrible golfers). Then we got back on the jet and home in time for dinner. The carbon footprint of that trip probably equaled a family-of-four’s energy consumption for a year.
But a problem was brewing. Mel had just directed Passion of the Christ, which caused a worldwide, phenomenal, box-office, and cultural explosion. It was also drawing worldwide condemnation for the anti-Semitic stereotypes it portrayed. I held off seeing it as long as I could because I preferred being in the dark, but one day my dad and I went to a matinee. Mel was in the press arguing that there was no anti-Semitism in the film, that it was just “historically accurate,” at least according to the New Testament as he interpreted it, and I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the hooked-nosed Jews, their bloodlust, and their culpability in the killing of Jesus was the same anti-Semitic bullshit I had been hearing since elementary school, and I was disturbed that Mel was giving that hateful crap so much media attention. But truthfully, what was even more disturbing was Mel’s bloodlust, the way he fetishized the torture, wounds, and pain in close-up after close-up, over-dramatizing it to a ridiculous degree. At least in Braveheart there was a complex story to justify the gore in some way, but this film was only about suffering. It was disgusting to watch, and a pretty terrible, one-note movie, and I was at a total loss as to what I would say when I saw him again. But before long, Mel had the famous drunk-driving incident in which he called the arresting officer “Sugar Tits” and ranted that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” When I saw that on the news, I felt very bad for him. He is a very twisted guy—raised by a fucked-up, racist father and crippled by religious guilt, while also being the “Sexiest Man Alive” and a hugely talented artist—I can’t begin to imagine what that must be like. I didn’t want to let him off the hook, but I wanted him to know I was there for him, that I wanted to help him dig his way out of the terrible hole he had put himself in. I left him a funny voicemail message from “Rabbi Stern,” asking if he wanted to talk, although I don’t know if he thought it was funny because he never called back, and I have not spoken to him since. He soon got divorced, and Robyn and Laure remained close, so there has never been a way to reconnect. But if Mel is reading this book, Rabbi Stern sends love and peace to you.
My life was changing. I had been a dad since I was twenty-four years old and by forty-five, I had two kids in college and the last one getting ready to do the same, so I no longer had any day-to-day responsibility for them. We convinced my parents to sell the old house in Chevy Chase and move to Malibu, where they bought a sweet little place overlooking the ocean, in a mobile home park about a mile from our house. It was great to have them in the mix of our family life, although at times it felt like a never-ending episode of a family sitcom, with my parents bursting into our house unannounced, judging and commenting on my life choices and making sure I never got “too big for my britches.” I spent weeks at a time at the cattle ranch, hiking our property and learning its nooks and crannies. It was profound to find myself deep in the mountains, like a dream of being in Eden, alone with nature. Or at the top of our mountain at sunset, looking out over pasturelands and orange groves, with the Sierra Mountains in the distance, actually living the American Dream.
O beautiful for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain
Even though my Quad was my horse, I impressed my cattleman (and myself) with how good I was at herding cows, so thankful that I was getting to act out the City Slickers fantasy for real. I felt like myself there. And the ranch needed me. There was a house to be painted, porch to repair, single-wide trailer to restore, drainage and erosion to take care of, pest control, brush to clear, and the endless other chores that go into keeping up a ranch. Laure had been given a horse from a friend, and so there was, of course, shit to dispose of, hay to stack, an arena to groom, and on and on. I even grew to love working in the 105-degree heat in the summer, drinking gallons of water and sleeping like a baby when it cooled off at night. The fame thing was tricky in a place like this. A trip to Home Depot inevitably ended up in a photoshoot with the employees. The intrusions made Laure crazy, but to me, it felt like the civilian extension of my USO Handshake Tour, bringing the Power of Marv to the far-off reaches of Central California, and answering those same burning questions—“What the hell are you doing here?” and “Was that a real spider?” The only time anyone crossed a line was when some of the neighbor kids thought it would be funny to prank The Wet Bandit and broke into the single-wide trailer while we were away. They stuffed rags into the sink drain, turned on the water, and flooded the whole trailer. I’m not sure if the wasted money or the wasted water pissed me off more, but it showed the Power of Marv had a dark side as well.
But sculpture had taken over my days, and my life. It felt empowering to get up every day and go to the little house and work, not beholden to anyone to cast me or fund me. By now, I had filled the little house with crazy, huge, papier-mâché pieces—a man doing a one-handed handstand, a swimmer in mid-flight off the high-dive, a man bursting through a painting. I started making more durable pieces with plaster-cloth, plumbing pipe, and exterior paint that could live outside and placed them around the property—a surfer riding a huge wave, a fat man jumping over a picket fence. I loved the physical labor and problem-solving of making them. I tried to come up with new poses I hoped would make the audience laugh, learning how to make these seemingly impossible poses stand securely on their own and make the viewer smile at the visual trick. It gave me the same artistic satisfaction as the performance art I had been involved with, communicating a story to the viewer, even if the sculpture was only one frame of film. People started seeing my stuff and, through word of mouth, I got offers to buy some of my work, which, for a fledgling artist, was such a validation.
Henry moved back to LA, and we helped him look for an apartment while he applied to law school and worked at a nonprofit. He was going to need a little help with his rent, but before that happened, I had an epiphany—instead of spending money renting a place for him, why didn’t I give him the little house and spend that money to rent a sculpture studio for myself? I found a funky, industrial space on La Cienega Boulevard in Culver City, a one-thousand-square-foot space behind a mom-and-pop computer repair place. My place was an old refrigeration storage space with a roll-up door, corrugated metal walls, and thick, commercial refrigerator doors dividing the place into three separate rooms. Besides the space itself, the best thing was that my block was becoming the hippest art scene in LA, with galleries popping up in weird spaces like an old gas station or industrial storage spaces like mine. The galleries created a lot of foot traffic, especially when they had regular art walks, so not only did I have a space to make my art, I could open my doors whenever I wanted to and try to sell my art as well. I thought if I could sell enough to pay for my rent, I would be truly winning. I loved commuting every day and getting out of Malibu. My friends started coming over and hanging out. There was a great bar on the street and always new art to see at the galleries, although I was the only person on the block actually using my space as a working studio. I used the front room as a gallery, the back space as my work area, and the small space for a hangout area, and it worked perfectly. For the first year, I made more life-sized, dynamic, plaster sculptures and sold a bunch. I also started using the space to showcase other artists, giving them The Iceboxx, as it was now being called, for shows of their work and at the art walks. We did play readings and shot a little film there, and I loved having my own gallery right in the middle of the Art District. But most importantly, it made me take myself seriously as an artist. I wasn’t hiding anymore in my little house and garage. The coolest gallery owners in LA were my neighbors, coming in to see what I was working on, and it lit a fire under my ass.
The God of Sculpture is Rodin. I visited the Rodin Museum in France and was moved to tears by the people he created and the stories he told in a single gesture or pose. His bronze sculptures are huge, with the size and weight of them impacting the viewer just as much as the characters. I felt if I wanted call myself a sculptor, I would have to move past the Pop Art I was making and teach myself how to make sculptures like his. But how the fuck do you make a bronze sculpture? Get a piece of bronze and hammer it until you get a face or a hand? I did my homework, learning that bronze sculptures begin as sculptures in clay. A mold is made of the clay sculpture and then a bronze casting is made from the mold, using the lost-wax process, the same way bronze sculptures have been made since Egyptian times. I had forgotten how much I love clay. As a teenager, I built a potter’s wheel in our basement and sculpted a few small busts for fun, but I really didn’t know much about sculpting the human form. My drawing skills are truly at a toddler level, and I am always blown away when someone can draw people realistically, with accurate proportions and perspectives, tricking the eye into seeing three dimensions. But there is no need for those skills when you’re sculpting with clay because you are creating humans in actual three dimensions, and right off the bat I was able to shape the clay into the exact form I wanted. I could feel in my hands if a nose was too big or a finger too short. Clay is very forgiving. Unlike pottery clay, sculpting clay is oil-based and never dries out, so if you make a mistake or change your mind, you can add on more or take some away until it is just how you want it.
I bought a book on anatomy and a hundred pounds of sculpting clay and dove in. I made a half-life size young surfer, working long and hard to get the musculature and facial features right. I made a life-size young woman, her dress flying as she runs, balanced on one foot. These were also my first opportunities to work with a foundry and go through the whole process of creating a bronze sculpture—making the molds and wax castings, pouring the molten bronze, welding the pieces back together, adding patina and polishing it until it is finished. Like a movie crew, I now understood the crafts and laborers needed to produce the final vision. And seeing the strength of the material and the engineering possibilities, I got inspired to create even more out-ofbalance poses than I was already making. Casting a sculpture in bronze is not cheap, so the financial investment in a piece was also a factor, and now I committed myself to selling my pieces to make my money back. I started sculpting smaller pieces too, making things that were more affordable to people coming through The Iceboxx Gallery. I made a ton of mistakes, but overall I was pleased with what I was doing. I was barely breaking even, but creatively I was on fire in a way I had never experienced before. Even though I made my living in the performing arts, for the first time in my life, through sheer will and hard work, I could finally call myself an artist.
PRESIDENT OBAMAMAKES ME CRY
Henry had finished law school and was working in Washington, DC for Henry Waxman when the country voted in Barack Obama. Through his connections and my family-friendly fame, I got an invitation to participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll and meet the president of the United States, with Henry as my date. It was deeply emotional and joyous for us, being at the White House, the People’s House finally free of Bush and Cheney, with our first Black president working for a more just America inside its walls. I read books to groups of children on the lawn, mingled with military families, signed autographs, and took pictures. When it was time, we were escorted through the White House to the president’s quarters by a military escort and then into the Blue Room, where President Obama, Michelle Obama, and their daughters were waiting to meet with us for a few minutes. They were all Home Alone fans, and the president thought I was “a funny guy.” The kids asked about the spider and paint cans, and Michelle was as charming as a person can be. I was on autopilot because it does not get any more out-of-body than a moment like this. We had our picture taken as a group (which was later sent to me, signed by the President and Michelle) and said our goodbyes. Our military escort took us into the rotunda outside the room, where there were a hundred or so people mingling. Henry and I stood there in shock, having just hung out with Barack and his family, when a voice cut through the din of conversation. “Daniel Stern! Daniel Stern, come over here.” Henry and I turned to see Joe Biden waving at me. The vice president was standing with his wife Jill and Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, who lived upstairs at the White House. They were laughing and having the time of their lives, enjoying the Easter festivities, and brought us right into the conversation. Mr. Biden was a huge fan of Breaking Away but knew so many of my other movies, which was crazy. Mrs. Biden was as warm and welcoming as could be, and when they found out Henry and I had visited Iraq with the USO, they were even more engaged with us. Mrs. Robinson told us that sometimes living at the White House felt claustrophobic. She laughed as she explained that she had finally figured out how to sneak out of the White House but had not yet figured out how to sneak back in. The experience, especially sharing it with Henry, felt like the culmination of a political era in my life. When I got on the plane to go home, I was embarrassed that I could not control my sobbing—with joy, relief, and gratitude—in front of the other passengers.
By this point, I was acting when I was inspired by a part, a director, a paycheck, or a location. I directed a play, American Buffalo, in Portland so that Laure and I could live near Ella for a couple of months. I shot an HBO show, Getting On, with Laurie Metcalf, just because I loved her so much. I did a Hallmark Christmas movie for a nice paycheck, where Laure and I rented a breathtaking house on Vancouver Bay. Drew Barrymore asked me to be in her directorial debut, Whip It, which was a blast, especially the night Jimmy Fallon took us on an underground bar crawl through Detroit, meeting up with the White Stripes and getting incredibly hammered in a pop-up bar in some abandoned building. I spent a month living on a farm in Malta, shooting a film but mostly spending my days smoking hash, swimming in the Mediterranean, and making a couple of papier-mâché sculptures just for fun. (When I left, I gave the sculptures to my driver, who kept the sweatsuit and pajamas that I dressed them in but threw out the sculptures themselves. Everybody’s a critic.)
I made my Broadway debut, costarring with Laurie Metcalf again in a powerful, Alzheimer-themed drama called The Other Place. What a joy to act with her every night and watch her performance get deeper and deeper. She is one of the most brilliant stage actresses ever, and it was the honor of a lifetime to dance with her on that stage. I acted in and directed a new TV series called Manhattan, which was a 1940s drama about the building of the nuclear bomb. Laure and I brought the dogs and the horses, rented a farm in Santa Fe for five months, and had the time of our lives. I had never directed an epic drama like this before and loved leading the crew to make a visually spectacular show filled with world-class performances. The bonus of this adventure was that Santa Fe is a major art destination, and home to a world-class bronze foundry called Shidoni. I set up a studio in the garage and did two sculptures while I was there, learning so much from their master craftsmen. The triple bonus was that I connected with a high-end gallery there on the famed Canyon Street, who agreed to represent me and show my work. Having my sculptures in such a classy gallery was a real confidence booster.
I had The Iceboxx Studio for five years and had established a legitimate career as a sculptor—galleries in Palm Springs, Santa Fe, and Venice carried my work as well as The Iceboxx. My work was in art magazines and interior design publications. I did art fairs in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills, created and maintained a website, and everything else that goes with being a small business operator. (Oh, and the sculpting too.) But I wasn’t used to selling myself. I always had an agent in show business to tell people how great my work was and how much it would cost to buy my services, and I hated having to do that for myself in this new world, especially because I didn’t really need the money. Then I discovered Public Art. I competed with other artists to create an original work of art that would be displayed on the Waterfront Park at the Port of San Diego. Each winning artist would be given a ten-foot-tall flagpole to create a work of art with, and those poles would line the waterfront walkway. I won one of the slots when I submitted a small model of one of my original poses, a man doing a one-handed handstand, this time on top of a flagpole. Getting chosen for that put me on the map, and I started getting offered other Public Art projects. It was the perfect job for me, and I grew to love it. When a city hired me to celebrate their heritage through one of my sculptures, I would dig into their history and attend the city’s town hall meetings to listen to the citizens about what aspects of their city were important to them. I worked with the arts commission, city planners, and even the city’s safety and construction departments when it came time for installation. It was the perfect combination of public service and art.
Grinding in traffic every day to The Iceboxx was starting to eat me up. I loved the space and being in the cool Art District that was growing all around me, but my style of art was not the avant-garde stuff that the galleries on my block sold. My acting fame caught people’s attention, but I felt I was intruding into the cool kids’ party with my Rodin-inspired work. I didn’t need or enjoy the foot traffic in and out of my studio, especially since most of my commissions were public art projects. I had lost interest in selling myself or my art. So I was wide open when an artist friend from Malibu told me about studio space near Ventura. It was the same distance from Malibu as Culver City, except that instead of driving down the Pacific Coast Highway into the hell of LA, the commute was up the PCH along the beautiful coast and farm fields. I checked it out and fell in love. An elementary school had been converted into an art colony, each classroom turned into an art studio, with the auditorium serving as a gallery and store. On top of that, the artists had set up community outreach programs to teach art in schools, held monthly art fairs, had professionals running the gallery, and the rent was half of what I was paying in Culver City. The move to the new studio gave me a gigantic creative boost. I felt that I had proven myself as a professional artist in the coolest art district in the world, and now it was time to just focus on the work itself, to try to be the best sculptor I could be. It never ceased to amaze me that I ended up sculpting in a kindergarten classroom, just like the one I dreamed about, making papier-mâché with my teacher, Mrs. Burton, that started me sculpting in the first place.
Laure and I fell in love with Ventura and the farm fields surrounding it. We started snooping around with a realtor, looking at lemon farms and avocado farms, educating ourselves about water issues, fruit-pickers, tree-trimmers, sprayers, and everything else that goes into running a farm like that. We were in no rush to take on such a big move and change, and still wrapped up in Malibu, but we were getting ready to move on. We had done what we set out to do—raise our family and commit to helping our community as best we could. I was now the chairman of the Art Task Force for the city, with a goal to create a new official Arts Commission that would oversee public art and education in Malibu. I had loved it all—coaching, teaching, community organizing, even fundraising—but our kids had grown and gone, and it was time for the parents of the next generation of kids to take the reins, do the work, and keep things going to pass on to the generation after that. I had stepped up to become the president of Malibu Foundation in an attempt to wean the organization of its dependency on Laure and transition it into an organization that could function well without its founders. Over my term as president, we recruited new board members, reinforced the staff of the Boys & Girls Club, expanded our connection with the national board, and tried to assure the strength and longevity of all that we had helped build. When Laure and I were comfortable and confident that everything was in good hands, we announced that we would resign from the board and become emeritus board members. Like our kids going off into the world, this twenty-year dream was up and running, and we were so proud and exhausted. Boys & Girls Club of America saluted us with a service award, and the Malibu community gave us a wonderful farewell party. We were touched and honored. Little did we know just how honored we would be.
Not only did the community recognize the contribution that Laure and I had made, but so did President Obama. That’s right, my old friend Barack. Our community nominated us for, and the President bestowed upon us, the President’s Call to Service Award, the nation’s highest honor for volunteerism. We were given a plaque and the special pin you wear to show this honor, although I am still afraid to take it out of its case. He also included a letter to each of us, thanking us for dedicating our time and service, and congratulating us on all we had achieved. I might not have an Oscar or a Tony, but in my family, there can be no higher honor than to get recognized for public service. Laure and I were brought to tears by this huge surprise. It touched us in the deepest possible way. We had done our work out of our love and commitment to the betterment of the youth and families in our community, not for any public recognition. I had never even heard of the President’s Award before. But man, did that feel special. (And it still does!) Laure and I had been together for most of our lives and had long ago bonded with each other through our marriage, our children, and our home. But creating the Malibu Foundation for Youth and Families, which is still growing and thriving, with Boys & Girls Clubs branches at every single school in Malibu, created a new kind of bond for us—sharing a vision for building a safe home for all of the kids in town to call their own, and then bringing it to life. We finally felt like our work in Malibu was done. So now what?
THE PLAY IS THE THING
And so begins the last chapter of this book. (Or maybe it’s the first chapter of the next one?)
2016 was the year wherein one life ended and this new one began. At this point, Ella was a paramedic, riding at breakneck speed through the streets of Portland, delivering babies on the side of the road, bringing overdose victims back to life, carrying a child who had their face bitten badly by a dog, and other absolutely crazy shit you can’t even imagine. She had already been accepted to medical school, was in love with a great young man, and they were getting married in October 2016. By then, Sophie was already married and was crushing it with her music. She toured with her band, Sophie and the Bom Boms, and was an outstanding performer and singer, thrilling audiences with her shows. She also had a songwriting deal with the infamous Dr. Luke and was writing songs for Britney Spears, Kesha, Conor Maynard, and many other pop stars.
By now, Henry was legislative counsel to the legendary California State Senator Fran Pavley, using his degree to help write groundbreaking environmental laws. But Senator Pavley’s term limit of twelve years ended in 2016, and she asked Henry to run for her seat. He had always played in the political arena, although never as a candidate, but it turned out he was built for the job. And so was Laure. None of us had any experience organizing a political campaign, but we did know how to fundraise, which is unfortunately the most important part of politics. We turned the little house into campaign headquarters. Everyone in Malibu knew Henry and Laure and their contributions to their community, and they were supportive of their hometown boy seeking such a high office like state senator. Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner, Paul Reiser, and so many of our show business friends knew Henry from when he was a kid, and his nickname was “Mr. President” because he was so smart, caring, and charismatic. Henry hired Senator Pavley’s campaign people and Laure raised money. Henry went from debate to debate and fundraiser to fundraiser, a happy warrior offering real solutions to the problems of environmental justice, drought issues, clean energy, fracking, and so many other seemingly unsolvable issues. I did what I could, going to events and talking him up, but Henry didn’t need my help and neither did Laure, so mostly my job was to worry. In June 2016, Henry won the Democratic Primary, fending off other well-funded challengers in a somewhat ugly campaign. (Although what political campaign isn’t ugly?) The district leaned Democrat, but he had a fight on his hands to win in November, and we went into fund-raising mode again to raise the money needed to compete. Henry and Laure were a well-oiled machine, but I was beginning to crack.
On the outside I was saying, “I love Malibu! I have worked as hard as I could, my wife has given a big chunk of her life to make this a better place, and now our son wants to serve the people of this city. There is no better place on earth.” But on the inside I was saying, “Fuck Malibu! I hate this fucking place. Too crowded, too entitled. Ripping up its natural beauty to build monstrous homes and have parties? Fuck this place!” I was torn apart by the dueling voices and dealt with it by going to the ranch and my studio as much as possible. But on the Fourth of July weekend, I finally snapped. I always tried to be away during holidays in Malibu because that is when the entitled assholes really come out to play, but this weekend a friend was getting married, and I had to stay for the wedding. We got home after midnight, and when we pulled into the driveway, the music blaring from our neighbor’s house was as loud as if you were at a disco. And it wasn’t even Kid Rock’s house this time. It was the real estate mogul, the son of the fireman who embodied Old Malibu, now disrespecting his neighbors, as well as nature, in such an arrogant way. I was fuming mad. It was my worst fear come to life, the final killing of the Malibu dream I had for our family. Henry and Laure tried to calm me down, but I became unmoored. By one in the morning, I was out of my mind. With the disco bass beating into my brain, I finally called our neighbor to tell him to shut it off, but only got his answering machine. I called our other neighbors, who were incredibly pissed off that this was going on, but no one could get in touch with the real estate asshole because it turned out he had rented the house to Bono (yes, that Bono), who was having a birthday party for his daughter. Henry and Laure made one more attempt to stop me, both feeling the headline of me being arrested for going crazy at a trendy Malibu party might not be good for Senator-to-Be Stern, but I was too far gone by then. I called the police and told them that there was an unlawful party going on and that I was going over there to shut it down and I hoped they would join me. I hopped in my truck, drove around the block to the house, parked the car in the middle of the street, and headed in. The security guys at the door recognized me and since I was still wearing my suit and tie from the wedding, assumed I must be on the list, so I got in with no problem. I had not been in the McMansion the real estate narcissist had put up in place of the modest home his parents raised him in, and the absolute gaudiness of the place slowed me down for a beat. It looked like a hotel—slate walls, dim lighting, waterfall. The open lobby area had a bar in it, where cool people in black clothing mingled. At the far side of the lobby was a balcony, which overlooked a lit stairway leading down to the pool area where most of the party was taking place. It also happened to look into my bedroom! I lost it.
I started ranting, “Shut the fucking music off!! Families with children are trying to sleep, and instead we all have to listen to this shitty music all night long?! Shut it off! You don’t even live here, you fucking pretentious assholes! To celebrate Bono’s daughter’s fucking birthday at one o’clock in the morning? Shut it off!” (Or something like that.) At first it was hard for people to understand what was going on, so I had to keep getting louder and louder. Security finally came in as I descended the stairs, blocking my way but not wanting to get in a fight with a “guest.” Also, I am six-foot-four and can look pretty insane and scary when I lose my shit, and I was at full tilt. The police came quickly, thank God. They shut down the party, calmed me down, and mercifully let me go on my way, empathetic to how out-of-control and inappropriate that party was and how justified my anger was. I drove back to our house, where Laure and Henry were worried sick, and broke down. “I can’t live in this place anymore. I hate it here so much.” The most beautiful place in the world, that we had worked so hard to sustain and preserve, had been ruined beyond repair. They won. “I give up.”
Two months later, we found the perfect farm in Ventura. Forty acres of tangerines, lemons, and avocados, a house big enough for family to stay with us and even a small guesthouse. With Sophie’s album coming out, Ella’s wedding, and Henry’s election all happening at the same time, we didn’t even tell the kids that we had put a deposit on it. They were all having incredible adventures in their lives, which is everything a parent could hope for, and this was a new Laure and Danny Adventure, the first one without the kids in a very long time. By November, Ella was married, Sophie was pregnant, and Henry was a senator, winning his election on the same day my old buddy Donald Trump became the president (talk about mixed emotions!). When we finally told the kids and my parents about the farm, they were thrilled for us. The farm owners let us bring everyone out to see the place, and they were excited that it was going to be ours. Unlike my first time on our cattle ranch, I did not start a stampede, mostly because this farm didn’t have cows. But it was drizzling that day, lush and wet. Too wet, actually, because when I drove us all out into the orchard to see the beautiful fruit trees, I somehow managed to get the car stuck in the mud. It was about a mile from the house, and I had to hike back to get a neighbor to pull us out with his tractor. My ninety-year-old parents sat calmly in the car while my children laughed at how ridiculous it was that I took us out there without knowing what I was doing. But they should be used that by now. That’s how I roll.
About a year after we moved in, the Woolsey Fire burned through Malibu and my parents had to evacuate their beach side trailer and shelter with us. The stress, the fear, and the eight hours stuck in traffic on the PCH was a lot. The first night they stayed with us, my dad had severe shortness of breath, and I took him to the hospital. He came out a week later, but Laure and I realized that even when Malibu reopened, which wouldn’t be for weeks, it would be too dangerous for them go back and live on their own—too isolated for my dad’s worsening condition, and too much stress on my mother to be his full-time caretaker. They loved and needed their independence, but eventually we convinced them to move into our guesthouse, where they would be totally separate from us but right there if they needed us. They were both Philadelphia city kids, and living on a farm, right across from the ducks and chickens, both confounded and delighted them. My dad was in and out of the hospital for a year, and just after they celebrated their sixty-fifth anniversary, my dad went into sudden decline. My sister flew down, my brother came out, my kids and nieces and nephews and even my dad’s best friend from DC were all there when he passed away in his bed. Watching him pass from this life to the next was transformational for me. (As well as for him!)
I loved my dad with every fiber of my being. He was so fun, so smart, so loving, so emotional, and so fucked up too, a role model for me as well as a cautionary tale, which I guess could be said about most fathers and sons. He worked his whole life trying to make other people’s lives better and safer and more just. We buried his ashes under a beautiful tree near the guesthouse so that he is always near us. My mom still lives in the guesthouse, and what a blessing that has been. All of her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids visit her constantly, and the people who work on the farm love and respect “Ms. Cynthia” deeply, making sure she always has fresh lemons, avocados, tangerines, eggs, and her newspaper brought in from the street. Laure loves her like her own mother, showers her with food, coordinates everything from electricians to doctors, as well as being tech support. Mom loves us all back so freely and shows us how a great life is lived. She has been in and out of the hospital herself a few times, adding to my list of things to worry about, but the opportunity to have so much time with her at this point in our lives is one of the many unforeseen joys that this new life on our farm has brought me.
We have lived here for six years as of this writing, and it is everything I hoped it would be, and more. Between the farm and the ranch, I spend 100 percent of my time in the beautiful countryside of California as a Gentleman Farmer. Of course, I let the real work go to the cattlemen, orchard managers, and Laure—you know, people who actually know what they’re doing. But I am free to make as much tangerine juice as I want, clean horse stalls, lay irrigation pipe, pick avocados, collect eggs, herd cattle, and give tractor rides whenever I feel like it. I still like acting when I am inspired by a part or a project and I should probably direct at least one more film before I die, just for the personal challenge of it, although the job itself might kill me. I have spent my entire life on movie sets, which is crazy, but what is crazier is now I have graduated into being the “wise old man” on set. The crew calls me “Mr. Stern,” tell me their favorite movies of mine, and sometimes look at me like I must have looked at Jack Palance, Robert Redford, and Roy Scheider when I had the honor of working with them, older guys you loved in older movies, still standing and doing it.
